What to Read in March

Miles Davis, 1955, from Dreamer with a Thousand Thrills (Powerhouse), by Patricia Bosworth.

Photograph by Tom Palumbo.

Tobias Wolff once lamented that “when people use the word ‘Nam’ it’s like salt on a slug.” But a recent spate of fiction about contemporary war (Redeployment, Green on Blue) signals an end to the combat clichés. Onto this fertile ground parachutes Will Mackin’sBring Out the Dog (Random House). A U.S. Navy veteran with five combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan under his belt, Mackin also produces the kind of simultaneously sharp and ethereal writing that caused George Saunders to bless him with a story-length blurb. On one page of Mackin’s debut are “Taliban [leaping] from the ditch”; on the next, “Time passed mysteriously inside the clouds.”

Pencils down, brushes up: Tom Rachman goes beyond the base coat with The Italian Teacher (Viking), a portrait of a son and his large-scale father. Susan Ronald unveils the unscrupulous Florence Gould in A Dangerous Woman (St. Martin’s). Flames can’t burn the memory of masterpieces: Peggy Cooper Cafritz’s art collection is Fired Up! Ready to Go! (Rizzoli Electa). Nimble novelist Lynne Tillman sees both Men and Apparitions (Soft Skull). Art and love are the Trick (Europa), by Domenico Starnone. Duncan Hannah’sTwentieth-Century Boy (Knopf) is a gallery of the louche, the lurid, and the illuminating. Iris Apfel’sAccidental Icon (Harper Design) is spectacular.